"A cultural and professional movement, focused
on how we build and operate high velocity
organizations, born from the experiences of its
practitioners."
-- Chef Style DevOps
1
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https://youtu.be/_DEToXsgrPc

Words of Affirmation
Acts of Service
Receiving Gifts
Quality Time
Physical Touch
THE FIVE LOVE
LANGUAGES

We talk a lot about empathy in
DevOps. The Five Love
Languages is basically about
being empathetic. But we need to
talk about HOW you do these
things, rather than just say
"MAKE WITH THE EMPATHY"
WHAT DOES THIS HAVE TO DO
WITH SHIPPING SOFTWARE?

After the first US based Devopsdays in
Mountainview 2010 Damon Edwards and John
Willis coined the acronym CAMS, which stands
for Culture, Automation, Measurement and
Sharing. Jez Humble later added an L, standing
for Lean, to form CALMS.
There are several different models/definitions of
DevOps, but for purposes of this discussion, Iʼm
going to use CALMS to specify different focus
areas on what DevOps can be.
CALMS

A lot of people say that culture doesnʼt matter.
J. Paul Reed has talked about that itʼs not
important to change your culture, but mostly
to ensure that your culture is consistent.
Culture also has to do with the personality of
your organization. You may be an organization
that is based on consensus, etc, like we all
need to make sure everyone agrees and lets
have meetings about meetings and meetings.
CULTURE

Add mention of incenting
employees; use Etsy example.
You incent for the behavior
that you want and then that
behavior drives culture which
drives further behavior.
You can’t directly change culture. But
you can change behavior, and behavior
becomes culture
— Lloyd Taylor, VP Infrastructure, Ngmoco

In general, a software process
should be automated up to the
point where it needs specific
human direction or decision
making.
“Asking experts to do boring and
repetitive, and yet technica
!
y demanding
tasks is the most certain way of
ensuring human error, short of sl
"
p
deprivation, or inebriation.”
—
Continuous Delivery
, Jez Humble and David Farley

Lean Thinking is a business methodology which aims to provide a
new way to think about how to organize human activities to
deliver more benefits to society and value to individuals while
eliminating waste.
The term Lean Thinking was coined by James P. Womack and
Daniel T. Jones to capture the essence of their in-depth study of
Toyotaʼs fabled Toyota Production System.
Lean thinking is a new way of thinking any activity and seeing the
waste inadvertently generated by the way the process is
organized
Sometimes people say the "L" stands for Learning (for example,
Jason Hand). That's okay. We can still be friends. But for purposes
of my talk, it's "Lean"
LEAN THINKING

How do we know if we have been
successful if we donʼt collect metrics?
Measuring is important to start during a
transition as well – you canʼt go back in
time and collect information you didnʼt
know you wanted at the time.
Setting success criteria is very key at the
beginning of any transition.
MEASUREMENT

Transparency is key. No “Brents”.
First, donʼt keep info to yourself to
protect yourself. Also, share as
much of the “why” – no mandates.
Finally, goes to a culture of trust.
Blameless postmortems cannot
happen in a culture without sharing.
SHARING

What does this have to do with
anything?
WUT?

EACH OF THESE IS A
“DEVOPS LOVE LANGUAGE”

Itʼs more important for me to
learn to talk to them than for
them to learn how to listen to
me.
If you find yourself thinking "this is
crystal clear to me, why aren’t they
s
!
ing it?," that’s more about you than
it is about them.
— –Bill Joy,
Arrested DevOps
Episode 33

Patrick Debois has said
(jokingly) that we should
rename DevOps to “common
sense”. The problem is,
common sense is a relative
term.
IT'S NOT ENOUGH TO GET SOMEONE TO DO IT,
THEY NEED TO SEE THE VALUE IN THEIR OWN
LANGUAGE

DiSC is kind of like Meyers
Briggs. I like to use DiSC
because itʼs easier to make a
quick assessment (you could
be wrong).
DISC
▸
Dominant/Direct
▸
Influencing
▸
Steadiness
▸
Conscientious

Someone focused on direct is most likely
going to respond to Lean and Measurement.
They are results-driven. They want to see
how the change helps move the ball forward
and are also more likely to be influenced by
experimentation.
Preaching culture or automation wonʼt
necessarily resonate with them – they care
less about the “how”
DIRECT
LEAN/MEASUREMENT

Influencing types will respond to
culture and sharing. They like
consensus and they like to
collaborate. The results-oriented
portions (especially the
automation) wonʼt make as much
of a difference to them.
INFLUENCING
CULTURE/SHARING

Steadniness like stability. They want
to be sure about change and to be
comfortable with it. Automation helps
them feel safe, and measurement
assists in understanding that things
really didnʼt get messed up. Lean can
make an S feel uncomfortable.
STEADINESS
AUTOMATION/MEASUREMENT

Conscientious folks will respond
to sharing and measurement.
They love data. They want to
measure 30 times and cut once.
Lean might scare them. Culture
is less of an impact. Automation
CONSCIENTIOUS
SHARING/MEASUREMENT

Often times we have conflicting incentives. Dev incented to ship
features quickly. Ops incented for uptime (nancy example).
These may actually not be at odds. Ultimately our driver should be to
move the biz forward, at a macro level, but we have our individual
incentives.
Changing these isnʼt always right. Understanding what appears to be
a conflict may actually help. Ship changes at a higher velocity can
actually increase the stability of a system b/c small batch changes are
more stable. Ship more frequently actually helps both dev and ops.
Similarly, caring out uptime and stability can enable the dev to ship
more features as they are not caught up in troubleshooting and have
more resources available from ops, etc.
Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Use - Daniel H. Pink
ASSESS THE DRIVERS

Talk about the Challenger Sale.
“(Challengers have) a deep understanding of
the customerʼs business and use that
understanding to push the customerʼs
thinking and teach them something new
about how their company can compete more
effectively.”
If youʼre not comfortable with being a
salesperson, find a buddy who is.
BE A SALESPERSON

The key is to look at your key influencer as your client
instead of your boss for the purpose of this project.
If your client (who happens to be your boss) shoots
down your ideas and offers a counter plan, you have to
be ready to channel some boldness and stand firm in
your beliefs. Instead of arguing back and forth or
worse, completely backing down because of his/her
position above you in the company, you could say
something like “I see what youʼre saying, but if we do it
your way, this is what is going to happen”, and then lay
out how their plan is flawed.
TALK THEIR LANGUAGE

The Compliant One: The compliant person will sign the
documents, put their time in, “do their TPS Reports,
punch the clock. Theyʼll do it because they need a job,
or are too lazy to leave. Whatever the reason, theyʼll
make the changes, but wonʼt really care much about it.
The Committed One: The commitment person will
simply, “Believe in the TPS Reports”. Theyʼre dedicated
to the idea of change and are committed to the
success of the company.
As you have more commitment, the success of your
company will be exponential.
COMPLIANCE VS.
COMMITMENT

theyʼre authentically interested
in them, and enjoy the pursuit
of the how of change more
than the change itself.
THE BEST CHANGE INFLUENCERS ARE THOSE
WHO DON’T SEE PEOPLE AS SOMETHING THEY
‘HAVE TO DEAL WITH’.

Don't dictate; let the influencers
and stakeholder take an active part
in the change
Donʼt let it just be a venting
session – we can all talk about how
we got where we are, but this is
about moving the needle forward.
BRING PEOPLE ALONG FOR
THE RIDE

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The title of this session is inspired by the self-help book The Five Love Languages by Gary Chapman, but the similarities end there. When we are working to bring about cultural change in our organization, it’s essential for us to understand that not everyone speaks the same “language” of DevOps as we do. The CFO has different drivers and communication style than your friend in the QA department, who is still different than the DBA in that remote office. In this talk, I will work to help provide techniques and strategies for identifying the drivers of your peers and decision-makers. We will talk about beliefs, perceptions, and communication styles, all with the express intent of helping YOU drive home the value of the DevOps philosophies and work-practices to make your organization succeed!

Content will include a discussion of the DiSC model, as well as discerning drivers for different individuals to adjust the conversation.

The DiSC model provides a common language that people can use to better understand themselves and to adapt their behaviors with others. The four areas of DiSC are Dominance, Influence, Steadiness, and Conscientiousness.

Approximately 25% of the talk will be background on DiSC and methods for identifying the communication styles of others. 25% will be based upon identifying drivers of example roles in an organization (finance, product, tech ops, etc), and the remaining will be focused on use cases and strategies for applying this skill towards organizational change.